Unleash Your Conference Participants To Become WOM Influencers

October 22, 2010 by Jeff Hurt

Here is the slide deck from my recent presentation for Daxko Webinar Series on association and conference influencers. Enjoy!

Unleash Your Conference Participants To Become WOM Influencers

Additional statistics and facts mentioned during webinar.

United Breaks Guitars video received 25,000 views in the first 24 hours it was uploaded in 2009.

91% Prospective Association Members learn about organization by WOM.
67% learn about organization from a colleague.
WOM is most effective membership recruitment tool. (Marketing General 2010 Membership Marketing report)

Word of Mouth Marketing: Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications.
WOM can be encouraged & facilitated.
WOM empowers others to share experiences.
WOM focuses on providing good customer service first.
WOM acknowledges unsatisfied customer is equally powerful.
Attempting to fake word of mouth is unethical and creates a backlash, damages the brand, and tarnishes the corporate reputation.

Cisco estimates that by 2013 video will represent 91% of all data flowing over the Internet which is very different than today’s text and graphics medium.
In one month in 2009, 100 million Americans watched a total of 6 billion YouTube videos ~ Comscore

Cloud Computing – these cloud Internet services are accessible anywhere with a login from a web-connected device.
By December 2009, 59% of all online consumers use social networks.

8 in 10 Millennials say they have taken action on behalf of brands they like and trust.
9 in 10 U.S. Millennials take action once a week on behalf of bands
66% Millennials recommend brand
76% Millennials say their family and freidns depend upon their opinions
54% Millennials tell family and friends not to purchase products or services
41% Millennials boycott an organization
32% Millennials post something negative abot a brand in social network
29% join community of people who dislike the brand
Edelman 8095 Global Liaison Network – Report For Millennials Taking Action Is A Core Value

7 million are both Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens.
Google biased toward content with lots of inbound links like blogs, discussion forums reviews and these end up near top of search rankings. They have opinions and love to spread them.

Get an outside perspective. (Monitor, collect and analyze customer perspectives.)
Respond (Create profiles in the places your customers go and reach out to them.)
Enable (Give customers tools, content and opportunities to talk about you.)
Amplify (Find ways to connect fans to each other, and to the rest of the world.)
Change (Help organization leadership learn from fan activity, improve and change for better.)

Old sales funnel: Eyeballs to awareness to consideration to preference to purchase to customer.
New marketing funnel continues: Supported to empowered to delighted to fan to broadcaster.

What tips have you found to unleash your conference participants to create WOM influencers? What excites you most about WOM influence?